The last element used in both poems is allusions. “The Hollow Men,” alludes in the first epigraph to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, “Mistah Kurtz—he dead. / A penny for the Old Guy” (lines 1-2). This novel contains a character, Krutz, who is like the men in the poem because is forced into violence. “A penny for the Old Guy” is an expression used by kids in England to collect money for fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day, an annual celebration of the failure of Guy Fawkes to blow up parliament. This is similar to the straw men who would be burned during this celebration. Eliot also provides an allusion to Dante’s Inferno, “Those who have crossed/With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom / Remember us—if at all—not as lost/Violent souls” (lines 15-18). This novel is a perfect example of this poem’s theme. As the well-known quote from the novel tells the reader to abandon all hope, just as the hollow men have done. This also …show more content…
The poem says, “You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter” (line 3), which make reference to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. This direct quote from the Mad Hatter amplifies Eliot’s state of mind and the audience's attitude when first reading this poem. He also states the names of Greek philosophers, royalty, and mythological Gods, and other respected figures in saying, “Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James, / Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey--/All of them sensible everyday names. /There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter, /Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:/Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter” (lines 6-11). This allusion is used to show how the first name for the public is meant to be someone of high intelligence and accepted. However, all of these people also contained a second and third personality that not everyone saw. This poem shows that maybe one does not know two thirds of who the actual
The first two lines of the poem set the mood of fear and gloom which is constant throughout the remainder of the poem. The word choice of "black" to describe the speaker's face can convey several messages (502). The most obvious meaning ...
The deep complexity of its message is furthered by Olds’ use of metaphor. In describing the unburied corpses strewn about the cemetery, she notes a “hand reaching out / with no sign of peace, wanting to come back.” Through indirect metaphor, she is able to not only bring emotion to the stiffness of a frozen hand, but ponder a greater question—whether the “eternal rest” of death is peace at all. Despite the war, despite “the bread made of glue and sawdust,” and despite “the icy winter and the siege,” those passed still long for life. Human cruelty and the horrors of existence permeate even the sanctity of death. In war, nothing is
What is the important message, or theme, in this book? Why do you think the author felt this message was important? Support your answer with three specific quotes or pieces of evidence from the text.
reflects upon the theme of the novel. As it highlights the fact that if people in the society
Diction is strongly used in both the novel and the poem to manipulate the thoughts of the reader and to stir up emotions. The poem makes an almost undecipherable, literal tone within the sound of the rhyme scheme, also creating calm peace with a mostly unpleasant situation. An example is the reoccurring line, “I have a rendezvous with Death” (Seeger 1, 5, 11, 20). The word “rendezvous” is a nice word where a person would meet somebody out of free will, even like to two lovers seeing each other. Differently, death is the unknown for many humans to fear. The narrator has arranged to meet with an experience known as death. The narrator would only take such actions if he had reason to believe it was not as fearful an action to take as so many believe. The repetition of this line keeps this idea fresh in his audience’s mind. Similarly, in All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque uses word like forgotten and misunderstood to describe the way that outsiders think of the soldiers participating in the war. The way
Firstly I will be exploring metaphor as it is used so much in this poem. The first metaphor which I will examine is “Haunting Flares” on line 3 of the first stanza. This quote has so many connotations, my first opinion on this was that the flares which the enemy are firing to light up the battlefield are said to be representing the souls of the soldiers fallen comrades. This could also be said to represent the power the enemy has on their own mortality as the bright flares would light up the battle-field exposing everything to their view, this indicates that the enemy always seem to have power upon the soldiers, almost godly. The second metaphor which I will explore is: “An ecstasy of fumbling” in line one of the second stanza.
However, after further analyzing the poem one might be extremely intrigued by the message the speaker conveyed. The audience gets a sense of the setting being in a cold, dark, brooding place. The orator uses language such as, cold, bitter, snow, icy, and white. There is a play on words in the first stanza, eighth line, using the words “coal” and “cold”. Instead of saying “icy cold,” the orator states “icy coal.” At first glance the audience may feel as though someone is in dying in this poem. Comparing this to similar scenarios in films, where a lead beloved character experiences cold shivers as they get ready to pass to the great beyond. The title “Who Will Know Us?,” catches the reader 's attention because as humans, we wander the legacy and effect we will leave behind. It causes the reader to contemplate what happens after death, when the world you left behind ceases to remember you exist. The readers are left with the question of is there a really a “life after death.” There is also use of similes such as, “it is cold, bitter as a penny...with his loose buttons like heads of crucifies saints”(Soto). Nostalgia, a word some readers may not be familiar with is featured in this poem. Nostalgia is a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. Personification plays an integral part on the voice in
know dark is right” (4). “Wild men. sing the sun in flight/do not go gentle into that good night” (10,12). “Eyes.blaze like meteors” (14). Thomas uses examples of different characters, and how they, too, find ways to keep fighting the oncoming of death.
As the first poem in the book it sums up the primary focus of the works in its exploration of loss, grieving, and recovery. The questions posed about the nature of God become recurring themes in the following sections, especially One and Four. The symbolism includes the image of earthly possessions sprawled out like gangly dolls, a reference possibly meant to bring about a sense of nostalgia which this poem does quite well. The final lines cement the message that this is about loss and life, the idea that once something is lost, it can no longer belong to anyone anymore brings a sense...
The setting of the poem is a day at the ocean with the family that goes terribly awry. This could be considered an example of irony, in that one would normally view a day at the beach as a happy and carefree time. In “Feared Drowned,” Olds paints a very different scenario, using dark imagery to create the setting: “…suit black as seaweed / Rocks sticks out near shore like heads.” The poem illuminates moments of intense fear, anxiety and the element of a foreseen sense of doom. Written as a direct, free-style verse using the first-person narrative, the poem opens with the narrator suspecting that her husband may have drowned. When Olds writes in her opening line: “Suddenly nobody knows where you are,” this signals to the reader that we are with the narrator as she makes this fearful discovery.
...the poem “The Waste Land” with a space between what the word would be which is “wasteland”. This can also represent how Eliot views modern society as a waste of land, as well as being a barren wasteland of culture and society. Eliot’s style and development is so precise that even a small hint of a pun in the title of one of his poems can relate to the entire product as a whole.
This poem entitled For Whom the Bell Tolls (or No man is an Island) was written by John Donne in the early 1600’s. It talks about how all men are connected as one, so don’t ask who they are mourning, they are mourning you. This theme what Ernest Hemingway used as the theme for his book, also titled, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
There are several death related motifs present in the poem. For instance, the poem opens with a passage from Dante’s Inferno, foreshadowing the theme of death in the poem. The speaker says “I know the voices dying with a dying fall.” He also references Lazarus from the Bible, who was raised from the dead, further developing the death motif. The speaker also seems to be looking back on life, referring to past experiences and his aging, as if he believes his death is imminent. He seems to have an obsession with hiding his age. According to the Psychoanalytic Criticism Chapter, the greater our fear of something is, the greater our obsession becomes (24). The speaker's fear of death has lead him to wear clothes that are fashionable for young people, such as rolling his trousers, and goes to great lengths to cover his age in other ways, such as parting his hair behind to cover a bald spot. The last stanza of the poem has a rather depressing and sad ending, a result of fear of
By only having the characters connected with evil (the downfall of Thomas) Eliot has specified a subtle way to differentiate between the evil characters concerned with the ruling power of man (the rhymers), and those who believe in the ruling power of God. Those that are believers in the ruling power of God do not rhyme. Those vying for the ruling power of man, do.
The absence of a complete identity and the inability be whole is what creates a line between The Love song of J Alfred Prufrock with Eliot’s other poems The Hollow Men and Portrait of a Lady. These poems work together using imagery and characters to highlight the darkness that was weighting down most people after the First World War was finished.